I was trapped in the kitchen yesterday. All day. And I pretty much loved it.
I’d like to say I have no idea how it happened, except I totally do; I was looking for garam masala spice and I noticed that my spice cabinet was out of sorts. Frankly, it was a bloodbath.
Spices jars in the spice carousel were borderline empty, while their multiple (multiple!!) refill jars lay sideways towards the back. Smallish piles of salt abounded on both shelves- which tempted the gypsy in me to throw it over my left shoulder (take that, devil!). I didn’t. Because it was around that time I realized how filthy my kitchen floor was. (Maybe the salt would’ve sanitized it.)
But there was no time for the floors just yet. Because more spices- larger ones- were discovered in the pantry cabinet. And that space, friends, was in utter chaos. I knew what I had to do.
It was 8:32 a.m.
I washed, refilled, combined, and tossed out spices. I organized dry goods. I stacked cans and lined labels. Snacks were placed with- shocker- other snacks. (Changing the conversation from “What snacks do we have?”/”I…honestly have no idea” to “What snacks do we have?”/”OhfortheloveofGod they are ALL RIGHT THERE.”)
Progress.
Fun fact: Did you know that we possessed no fewer than four empty Ziploc boxes under our counter? I’m not sure who this can help, but it certainly wasn’t doing me any good.
On another note, we collect Box Tops for Nora’s school. Usually they’re a normal-sized coupon-y type thing, but a few of the (empty) boxes I discovered really made you work for it. You had to want it.
I wanted it.
Onward.
The Tupperware was stacked within an inch of its life. Baking pans and trays pretty much stood up and saluted by the time I was done with them. And the cabinet reserved for our not-so-often-used appliances? Worthy of a cooking show backdrop.
Yeah. A cooking show backdrop.
And you know how most people have a junk drawer? My home gets a junk cabinet. (Big ol’ fixer-uppers have a lot of issues; space ain’t one of ’em.) But now? You could land a jet with that cabinet’s efficiency.
I kept going. Donating and trashing and repurposing as I went. The day pretty much skiiiiped along, and my kids were beyond stoked to have the day to putter in their jammies. (Not gonna lie, P.J. and I were as well.) While I worked, I started a Crock Pot roast. Prepped ingredients for the next morning’s breakfast bars. And that’s pretty much when I began to lose my mind.
Because the act of organizing each inch of the kitchen had felt SO FREEING and SO GOOD that I became a permissive monster. Snacks for lunch? Absolutely! Candy as a treat for helping me sort the lollipop bucket (don’t ask)? Help yourself. And the simple request for a science project to play with found me whipping up cornstarch Gak on the kitchen table with a myriad of utensils for each kid to stir, poke, and mash.
I sewed buttons on clothing that had lain unattended for months (or years). Permission slips were signed, checks were written, lunches were packed. Frantically.
By 5 p.m., an entire month’s worth of idealized domesticity had been packed into one day in the kitchen. And so had I. Right before dinner, I realized that I hadn’t left that room for more than a moment or two since I began the spice sorting. I began to wonder if, perhaps, I couldn’t leave the kitchen anymore. Like maybe I had unwittingly entered some sort of R.L. Stine situation. One of those creepy, locked-room R.L. Stine situations.
It broke me.
I had spent the entire day touching the kitchen. And, while the kitchen storage was organized within an inch of its (non-existent) life, the room as a whole was still crazy messy. I clearly had more work to do.
So I kept going. Until P.J. suggested that I…stop going. And maybe bathe. Because the kids had been asleep for an hour. And I was still wearing jammies.
I eventually- eventually- went to bed, proud with the amount of work I had done (in one room of the house, all frickin’ day). I reveled in the brain-clearingness of my chosen/compelled activity.
And woke up an hour later, realizing I had never found the damn garam masala.
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